Leaders in the Black community of Columbus, Ohio, who support a change to the Columbus City Charter to move to true district representation have filed an urgent request for council action, to City Council President Shannon Hardin.
In a letter dated March 26, 2026, the group of Black community elders, activists and leaders say: “We are concerned that another citizen initiative petition (Our City, Our Say) may violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by retaining the current residential districts and turning them into electoral districts. While this looked like a simple fix to them, we note that although our city is economically and racially segregated, none of those residential districts have a majority-Black electorate. Thus, adopting those boundaries for this new purpose of defining an electorate unlawfully dilutes the votes of the city’s geographically-concentrated Black citizens. We submitted our proposed petition simply to pressure test the question for them of whether having a district map in a council change petition meets the single subject test – which the city attorney confirmed for us.
However, given their signature gathering time crunch they went ahead without incorporating lawful electoral districts in their petition. It is not their job as citizens to secure those federal rights for the citizens of Columbus: it is ultimately the job of our representative elected officials to do so. We ask that you fix the current broken council election system by rapidly advancing to the ballot a district-based electoral method along with an electoral map that finally (after 60 years), seeks to secure those hard-won federal rights for Black voters in Columbus.”
The Columbus City Council district issue was brought forward in support of Black Columbus in 2015, when a citizen-initiated charter amendment proposal was placed on the ballot by Represent Columbus to gain better representation for Black Columbus, which was being poorly represented and left behind by the city. It was the first, and remains the only, ballot issue committee to ever get a citizen-initiated charter amendment proposal on the ballot in Columbus’s 112-year charter history. The Issue came in an August special election and was defeated handily, but reform efforts continued.
Scared of another citizen initiative (Everyday People for Positive Change) in 2017, the city hastily adopted a laughable form of election that has failed miserably. In creating “Fake Districts” where council members must live in one of nine districts, but are voted on citywide, the city has had its least competitive elections in history—with only 4 of 9 members facing an opponent over the last two election cycles, along with the 2025 election where voters of Fake District 7 preferred candidate Jesse Vogel, who lost the citywide vote (and thus the election) to Tiara Ross.
That Fake District 7 result motivated another group of citizens (Our City, Our Say) to gather signatures for another initiative, which if enacted, would unlawfully submerge the political power of Black Columbus. Thus, this group of Black community leaders is calling on Council President Hardin to ensure the voting rights of his community are preserved in a new format sponsored by
council.
The members of the Petition Committee for Black Columbus are:
Cecil Ahad
Kujenga Ashe
Jonathan Beard
Denise Benning
Tom Dillard
Calvin Hairston
James (“Brother Blondie”) Jones, Jr
Asad Shabazz
Tyrone Thomas